EDITOR’S NOTE: Timothy Faber serves as the legislative liaison for the Missouri Baptist Convention. Currently, through Missouri’s initiative petition process, pro-abortion advocates are laboring to enshrine the murder of pre-born children in Missouri’s Constitution. Read more here.
After numerous amendments and attempts at amendments, and after a 20-plus hour filibuster and much grand-standing, the Missouri Senate has finally passed SJR74 (Coleman – R, 22).
With much less fanfare, the Missouri House of Representatives has also passed HB1749 (Haffner – R, 55).
Both of these bills deal with initiative petition reform, and their passage in each chamber has caused mainstream media to go apoplectic. There have been claims that these bills destroy democracy; that they prevent every voter’s vote from carrying equal weight, and that they are power grabs by Republicans. Are such claims true? What should our response be? And what’s the big deal with all of this anyway?
Well, the big deal is that there have been over 20 different pieces of legislation offered this session that deal with how we can amend our state constitution. Twenty plus bills dealing with the same topic in any one session of the legislature is a pretty significant indication that the topic is important. But why is this topic so important?
Missouri is one of only 18 states that even allow for the constitution to be amended by initiative petition (IP). Initiative petition is the process whereby citizens can initiate, or begin, the process of amending the state constitution. The 20 or so bills in the legislature are not addressing whether we have initiative petitions, but only the process of how we would accomplish them.
Our current Missouri Constitution was adopted in 1945. Since that time there have been more than 35 attempts to amend it through the initiative petition process. From 1945 to 2000 (55 years) 10 amendments were adopted through the IP process. In less that half that time (2000 – 2023) there have been 11 amendments passed through the IP process! Such things as Medicaid expansion, medical use of marijuana, and recreational marijuana have been brought to voters through the initiative petition process and passed in just the past few years.
Let us consider, then, what these bills to reform the IP process are addressing.
SJR74 addresses the issue of concurrent majority. The Missouri Constitution currently allows itself to be amended with a simple majority of 50% + 1 of the total votes cast. If SJR74 passes the vote the people, future constitutional amendments would require the 50% + 1 majority of voters statewide, but would also require passage in a majority Missouri’s 8 congressional districts. In other words, the amendment would have to pass in at least 5 of Missouri’s Congressional districts as well as have a majority vote statewide. This extra provision is often called “concurrent majority”. Concurrent majority is perceived by some as allowing some votes to count twice and other votes not to count at all.
But the deeper issue, here, is the very nature of the constitution, and our form of government. While many people believe we live in a pure democracy, that is not really the case. The reality is our nation is designed to be a Constitutional Republic. In a pure democracy, the will of the people is supreme. In a Constitutional Republic, the rule of law is supreme, and the constitution of said republic is the supreme law. Article 6 of our U.S. Constitution declares this very fact – that the constitution is the supreme law. Thus, by definition, if a constitution can be changed by a simple majority of people, then in fact it is not the supreme law, but rather the will of the people is. In order for a constitution to be the supreme law, it must be able to withstand the changing winds of the populace to at least some degree.
Since the United States is a Constitutional Republic – or perhaps to demonstrate that indeed we are a Constitutional Republic – consider what the U.S. Constitution says in Article 5. Rather than being amended by popular vote of the people, the U.S. Constitution can only be amended when three-fourths of the states ratify an amendment. The eight most populous states in our nation hold just over 50% of our total population. So in a “pure democracy” the population of 42 states could be outvoted by the population of just 8 states. Our Founding Fathers knew that such an arrangement as pure democracy could lead to great division and the union of states would fail.
The Great Compromise of 1787 (also known as the Connecticut Compromise) established that the two houses of our Legislative branch – the House of Representatives and the Senate – would reflect the “republic” nature of our government and not merely a democracy. As our nation was being formed, there were those who pushed for a pure democracy – a House of Representatives based on an equal distribution of the population. But smaller states knew that they would be over-run by larger population states and thus lose their voice in national matters. They pushed for each state to have equal representation – a Senate wherein each state had equal representation regardless of size or population. The Great Compromise resulted in a Congress with two houses – one giving greater influence based on population, and one spreading that influence equally among the various states. Thus, even legislation in Congress has a concurrent majority aspect to it, since every bill must be passed in both houses of Congress before going to the President to be signed.
Our State government also has a bi-cameral legislative branch: The State House of Representatives and the State Senate. And, like Congress, a piece of legislation must pass both chambers before being sent to the Governor for adoption.
There are 163 state representatives and 34 state senators. Each Representative has about 38,000 people in their district, so areas of high population density have more representatives than rural areas where it takes a lot more area to have 38,000 people. The Senate districts balance that out.
So what we see in the very distinctive structure of our government – both on the federal and state level – is a Constitutional Republic that requires concurrent majorities for common legislation and on the federal level concurrent majority for constitutional amendments. Therefore, requiring concurrent majority for amendments to our state constitution should be readily agreed to.
Senate Joint Resolution 74 would accomplish that. And it would strengthen our republic and the supremacy of Law over the transitory whims of a pure democracy.